The present invention is directed to a high character capacity impact printer and more specifically to a impact printer of the daisywheel type.
In a daisywheel type character printer the daisy-wheel has, of course, size and weight limitations in order to minimize its mass and, therefore, increase printing speed. Print wheels typically have 96 spokes meaning the capability of printing 96 different characters.
Today, for many character printing applications, the traditional 96 on line characters is not enough. For example, character wheel changes must be made to provide bold face type or unusual custom graphics. Special character fonts are necessary, for example, in different fields such as physics, mathematics, insurance, engineering, etc. In addition, printing of a foreign language or more importantly the printing of English with foreign languages requires additional characters for these non-English letters.
Thus far in a character printer, especially of the daisywheel type, in order to provide the foregoing capability the user of the printer had to physically remove one print wheel and substitute another. This was time consuming and more importantly, is susceptible to misregistration. Moreover, the automatic capability of the printers are effectively nullified.